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climate activism
Bring on the Climate Doomers! We Need More of Them
Sure, there might be a few people who will drink from the doomer cup and curl into fetal surrender. But there will be far more who will take this message and fight back.
Sep 15, 2024
I recently complained that public narratives about climate—those promoted on so called mainstream platforms, and featured in cryptic one-liners from Democratic Party hopefuls—boil down to evasive bullshit.
We are rather stuck with a climate narrative that offers two wrong answers, and, in its bifurcated and reductionist limitations, rather mirrors our two party system that offers two, and only two bad choices. The Republicans loudly tell us that climate overheating is an outright hoax, or some minor and wholly natural fluctuation of geological cycles. The Democrats counter this with a fetishized future of wind and solar power. Meanwhile corporate arsonists burn coal, oil and gas with ever more maniacal fervor.
I don't need to debunk Republican climate orthodoxy—it thrives on drooling acolytes who have capitulated to facile explanations. The popular Democratic Party fairytale on climate, however, may need to be examined here—many of us mindlessly accept that a future of limitless indulgence will inevitably come to pass. Wind and sunlight shine, and blow upon the faces of the rich and poor alike. Once we harvest these free gifts from creation, the collective wealth of our species will be "decoupled" from the alleged finite resources of the planet. We can all have everything we want. It will be as if we each had our own private Amazon/Walmart nirvana. The climate apocalypse has raged against a population morally and cognitively broken by false hopes.
Even if we pretend that human society will lurch into a utopian phase with no war, no overproduction and no burning of fossil fuels, it may be too late to prevent wholesale species extinction and further environmental collapse.
Many of us have been so disabled by impossible promises that we miss four enormous points: 1) Nations cannot create energy systems to harvest the unlimited wind and sunlight without exhausting planetary resources. 2) The required extracted materials to manufacture solar panels and renewable storage batteries must be stolen from the Global South. 3) Renewable energy under capitalism does not replace fossil fuels—it creates additional growth thereby expanding the need to burn even more fossil fuels. 4) The collapse of our ecosystems from greenhouse gasses and industrial poisons is so far along that massive sea level rise, heating and degradation of oceans (coral reef bleaching, anoxic waters, fish die offs) and inland desertification will inevitably continue well into the future by the sheer momentum already launched. Even if we pretend that human society will lurch into a utopian phase with no war, no overproduction and no burning of fossil fuels, it may be too late to prevent wholesale species extinction and further environmental collapse.
The climate/environmental momentum toward hell, however, is but one component that drives inevitable pessimism. Far worse is the suicidal intentions of corporations, governments, and our concomitant air of mass indifference. Most of us are not resigned from a sense of hopelessness, but disabled by unwarranted optimism, or buoyed by a delusional faith in technology and reason. Even on the left there is little narrative climate clarity—our confusion likely inspires triumphant chuckles in the private board meetings of the oil industry. One truly bizarre story told in progressive circles is that mass resistance to environmental destruction has been eroded by "doomerism."
Here, for example, is Nathan Robinson's take on climate from a piece in Current Affairs:
Writing about climate change in a way that makes people feel scared and hopeless, like they are going to die in a wildfire whether they like it or not, is, in my opinion, part of why climate coverage is such a “ratings killer.” My suspicion is not that nobody wants to confront the subject of climate change—Don’t Look Up faces the matter head-on, and is hugely popular—but that if discussion of it just feels disempowering and depressing, there is no reason for anyone to read about it. Here at Current Affairs, two of our most popular recent articles have been on climate change, but the underlying message has been about taking action rather than merely forecasting the inevitable apocalypse.) I do not think it is helpful to tell anyone to “settle into the trans-apocalypse.” No! Join the Sunrise Movement and throw political leaders who refuse to act on climate out of office.
Robinson's warnings about the dangers of large-scale pessimism echo those of Michael Mann who asserted that "Doomerism is the new denial." As an aside, I must mention that I am an admirer of both Robinson and Mann. The former is one of our most important progressive writers (and the first editor to post one of my pieces on a large platform!) while Mann has been a critically important scientist in detailing the trajectory of our climate. His "Hockey Stick" climate graphs inspired the term and popularized the concept.
But the entire construct of doomerism (as Robinson and Mann understand it) rests on a shibboleth—is inaction really founded on collective despair—or is fear of doomerism another distracting trope? Do masses of people go from understanding that corporate goons burn our world to a crisp, to tossing up their hands and saying, “Fuck it, it’s hopeless?” At some sudden moment in time do they simply come (so the story of doomerism goes) to accept that there is no point to civil disobedience? Are we truly disabled due to a vision of unstoppable, irredeemable collapse? To the contrary, perhaps pessimism inevitably accompanies an honest appraisal of our precarious environmental future.
The oil industry understands with pristine clarity that hopeless people are as likely to respond with violent rage as with passivity.
If doomerism is really the "new denial," if a brigade of fatalistic and resigned people eagerly reject hope and let the oil industry off the hook, we would expect to see screeds by Guy McPherson and Eliot Jacobson posted prominently at The Heartland Institute.
However, we see no such thing. The last thing that oil companies and fascist think tanks want to convey to the public is that corporate crimes have ruined the planet and nothing can be done to change it. The oil industry understands with pristine clarity that hopeless people are as likely to respond with violent rage as with passivity. Doomerism is not the new denial. In fact, you will never see a word of pessimism on an oil industry funded propaganda platform. The industry honchos want your brain to be infused with optimism—hope, upbeat faith in human schemes to find new and better ways serves the cause of energy profits. Here is a Chevron happy ad to prove my point.
- YouTubeyoutu.be
Recent Pew research shows that some 63% of US citizens feel that climate is not the most critical issue facing the country. Less than a third of U.S. adults favor phasing out fossil fuels. We are clearly not a nation beset by fatalistic resignation, and collective environmental surrender, but, rather, a country collectively neutered by Chevron-style ad campaigns.
Even our best climate narratives stumble at the point where capitalism enters the story. Many writers insert a ghostly entity known as "we," as in a superbly written piece by Priya Satia entitled, "The Way We Talk About Climate Change is Wrong."
We will not be ushered past the grim reaper by optimists.
Satia argues quite originally that the notion of time that is indispensable to the capitalist mindset—the prioritizing of the future as it exists in the concept of delayed gratification—drives the system of imperial plunder and overconsumption. But who is the "we" in Satia's narrative that talks about climate in the wrong way?
There is no we—no public that owns a unique climate narrative. "We" are all tools of industry and politicians. Our climate narratives have been injected into our heads by means of well practiced repetition. Satia argues that indigenous people have historically lived according to natural rhythms. They have, from their intimacy with the earth, developed the capacity to take pleasure in the moment (a perspective embraced by some western writers as well, such as Thoreau). The political force needed to initiate a mass movement willing to abandon capitalist addictions for a deeper happiness can only take place under the leadership and passion of people with little to lose.
Even a writer with the depth of Priya Satia reduces climate mitigation to an act of mental transformation. She understands that capitalist mindsets comprise an obstacle, but does not explicitly discuss the critical preliminary task—the overthrowing of capitalism. The leadership in such an improbable effort—if we can even imagine it—will have to come from people who conceive of their choices in the darkest terms. If we are to survive another century, doomers will be the key to an eleventh hour reprieve. We will not be ushered past the grim reaper by optimists.
Extinction Rebellion insists that governments tell the truth about climate. If this were to happen, doomerism would flood our collective mindset—most of us would be doomers. Governments know that they can only retain power by sugar coating the climate story with fantasies about solar powered utopias.
A few years ago both Jonathan Franzen and Roy Scranton wrote, in effect, that it is highly unlikely that a massive climate catastrophe can be averted. Both were attacked in intellectual circles despite the fact that neither discouraged climate activism, and neither had access to platforms affecting mass opinion. Nor were their positions illogical considering what we know about capitalist history. I believe that the real threats to climate centered civil disobedience are not pessimists from the literary world, but optimists from corporate propaganda platforms, party politicians and mainstream media. Barack Obama stated at the 2024 DNC Convention that the U.S. will "lead the way on climate." If only those espousing Pollyannaish bullshit were attacked the way that Franzen was, the climate future might be less dire.
The fiercest fighters might well be those who have no chance to succeed.
In short, we need doomers—people encouraged to use their platform to scream that we are fucked. There might be a few people who will drink from the doomer cup and curl into fetal surrender. There will be far more who will take this message and fight back.
Anyone familiar with the Nazi Holocaust recalls that prisoners confined to the Warsaw Ghetto only rebelled when all hope was lost. Hopelessness has historically been the driver of action. Perhaps Nat Turner was a doomer, John Brown as well. The fiercest fighters might well be those who have no chance to succeed. I am not saying that we have no hope to survive and maybe even flourish, but anyone who does not consider that hopelessness may be a rational response to current reality is living in a fantasy world.
Hope is a tranquilizer. The first step to mass civil disobedience involves a shared pessimism, a deep understanding that we are truly and inescapably fucked. Only then can we form a movement that has a chance. Nathan Robinson and Michael Mann are two brilliant figures but dead wrong about doomers. We need more of them—there can never be enough.
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Rich Countries Crack Down on Climate Protests While Lecturing on Rights Elsewhere: Report
"You don't have to agree with the tactics of climate activists to understand the importance of defending their rights to protest and to free speech."
Sep 10, 2024
Rich Western countries have cracked down on non-violent climate protests with harsh laws and lengthy prison sentences, in violation of international law and the civil rights they champion globally, according to a report released Monday by Climate Rights International.
CRI, an advocacy group based in California, found that Australia, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States had used heavy-handed measures to silence climate protesters in recent years. The measures aren't in keeping with the freedoms of expression, assembly, and association enshrined in international law, the report says.
"You don't have to agree with the tactics of climate activists to understand the importance of defending their rights to protest and to free speech," Brad Adams, CRI's executive director, said in a statement.
"Governments too often take such a strong and principled view about the right to peaceful protest in other countries—but when they don't like certain kinds of protests at home they pass laws and deploy the police to stop them," Adams toldThe Guardian.
“These defenders are basically trying to save the planet... These are people we should be protecting, but are seen by governments & corporations as a threat to be neutralised. In the end it’s about power & economics”
- @MaryLawlorhrdshttps://t.co/WPunhbDhCq
— Dr. Aaron Thierry (@ThierryAaron) September 10, 2024
The CRI report details relevant international law, disproportionate actions taken against climate protestors, and draconian new laws established in four of the countries studied. It also lays out recommendations and proposed reforms. CRI was founded in 2022 with a mission that states, "Progress on climate change cannot succeed without protecting human rights—and the fight for human rights cannot succeed without protecting our planet against climate change."
The examples of government crackdowns on climate protesters are numerous. In October 2022, Just Stop Oil activists Morgan Trowland and Marcus Decker climbed the cables of a major bridge in England and remained there for two days, causing police to stop traffic across the bridge. They called for the U.K. to stop licensing new oil and gas projects in the North Sea.
Trowland and Decker were each subsequently sentenced to more than 30 months in prison under a 2022 law passed by the Conservative government that led the country at the time. The sentencing prompted concern from a United Nations special rapporteur. An op-ed published Tuesday in The Guardian by Linda Lakhdhir, CRI's legal director, indicated that the Labour Party, now in power in the U.K., has not made a total break from the Conservatives policies.
A similar U.K. case involved Just Stop Oil's disruption of traffic on a highway in November 2022. Five campaigners, including Roger Hallam, well-known as a co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, had spoken on a Zoom call designed to increase participation in the direct action. This July, they were each sentenced to at least four years in jail, with Hallam receiving a five-year sentence—the longest sentences ever given in the country for non-violent protest, The Guardianreported.
Michel Forst, the U.N.'s special rapporteur on environmental defenders, attended part of the trial and called the sentencing a "dark day for peaceful environmental protest."
The attempt to silence climate protest has gone well beyond the U.K. In late August, a German court sentenced a 65-year-old man to nearly two years in prison for blocking a road as part of a protest. An Australian protester was given 15 months in prison for blocking one lane in a five-lane road for 28 minutes in 2022.
In April 2023, Joanna Smith was one of two protesters who put water-soluble paint on the protective case of a sculpture at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. She faced unexpectedly harsh federal charges—for two felonies—that could have landed her in prison for five years, and ended up making a plea deal for a 60-day sentence. Her fellow protestor, Timothy Martin, has a trial scheduled for November.
The report makes the following four general recommendations for governments:
- Promote and protect peaceful protest;
- Adopt a proactive approach to facilitating and protecting peaceful demonstrations;
- Review, repeal, or amend legislation restricting the right to protest to meet international standards; and
- Ensure fairness for climate protesters in legal proceedings by allowing a public interest defense and an explanation of motivations.
The final recommendation stems from the fact that some jurisdictions and judges have prevented climate activists from stating the reasons for their civil disobedience in court. A U.K. judge, Silas Reid, has repeatedly denied climate protesters the ability to explain their motivations to juries, and even jailed two of them for contempt of court when they did so anyway.
The U.S. has not passed a harsh federal bill along the lines of the 2022 U.K. law, but many states have placed anti-protest laws on the books in recent years, and other state legislatures have considered measures, the report says. A 2019 Texas law strengthened penalties for protests around pipelines and other fossil fuel infrastructure, and a 2020 Tennessee law did so for "inconvenient" protests.
Harsh penalties are not the only danger that environmental defenders face. Nearly 200 environmental defenders were killed across the world in 2023, according a report released Tuesday by Global Witness.
Crackdowns on non-violent protest in rich Western countries extend beyond the issue of climate. Pro-Palestinian campus protests in the U.S. have also seen harsh crackdowns in the past year, with fears among campaigners that anti-protest measures could increase.
The report posits that governments should take a different approach to such civil disobedience, given its importance in spurring social change in the past.
"Governments should welcome peaceful protests as the sign of an engaged citizenry," the report says. "Those who engage in peaceful protest should, at a minimum, be assured that their rights will be respected."
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68 'Summer of Heat' Activists Arrested in NYC Protesting Citgroup's Fossil Fuel Financing
"Citi's business model is frying our planet," said one campaigner.
Jun 28, 2024
Scores of activists were arrested Friday during a protest outside Citigroup's New York City headquarters, where demonstrators condemned what organizers called the megabank's "racist investments devastating Black and brown communities" and fueling the worsening climate emergency.
Around 1,000 people including environmental leaders from the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana gathered at Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan's Financial District, where they rallied before marching to "demand that Wall Street stop funding the fossil fuel projects causing environmental devastation in mostly Black and brown communities in the Gulf South and across the globe."
The march ended at Citigroup's headquarters on the west side of Lower Manhattan, where organizers from New York Communities for Change said 68 people were arrested. The group said a total of 259 activists have been arrested during ongoing Summer of Heat on Wall Street protests, which it organized along with Stop the Money Pipeline, Climate Defenders, and Planet Over Profit.
"On Monday, climate activists from the Gulf South and allies held a roving speak out in front of financial institutions backing the fossil fuel industry, including KKR, BlackRock, and Bank of America," New York Communities for Change said. "On Wednesday, protesters held a civil disobedience action in front of the insurance conglomerate Chubb, which insures petrochemical projects destroying the climate in the Gulf South and around the globe."
One of the protest's organizers, Roishetta Ozane—who founded the Vessel Project of Louisiana—said that "projects that kill our communities like Freeport LNG (liquefied natural gas), Cameron LNG, Corpus Christi LNG, and others would not exist without the backing of financial institutions like Citigroup."
"Money made from them is blood money," Ozane added. "Since they destroy our homes, we're coming to pay them a visit. We will break this cycle of violence and exploitation now because later is too late. We want Citigroup to stop funding fossil fuels and to stop hurting our communities and our families."
As Stop the Money Pipeline coordinator Alec Connon explained in an opinion piece published earlier this month by Common Dreams:
Since the adoption of the Paris agreement in 2015, Citi has provided $204.46 billion in financing to the company's most rapidly developing new coal, oil, and gas fields. Remarkably, Citi has provided more money to those oil and gas companies than even JPMorgan Chase―the bank that climate activists like to call the 'Doomsday Bank.'
To be clear, I'm talking here only about the financing Citi has provided for companies developing new oil and gas reserves, not merely investing in infrastructure to keep the oil pumping from existing reserves. When we take into account financing to all fossil fuel companies, Citi has provided a little shy of $400 billion to coal, oil, and gas companies since 2015.
Citigroup contends that it is "supporting the transition to a low-carbon economy through our net zero commitments and our $1 trillion sustainable finance goal," and that its "approach reflects the need to transition while also continuing to meet global energy needs."
However, Climate Defenders organizing director Marlena Fontes countered that "Citi's business model is frying our planet."
"Every credible climate scientist says that we can't afford to put one more penny into fossil fuels, but Citi is the number one funder of fossil fuel expansion in the world," Fontes added. "Until Citi stops funding fossil fuels, they can expect resistance from everyday people like us who want our children to be able to play outside without coughing on wildfire smoke or getting sick from deadly heatwaves."
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